A particular JFK speech

[Paul Mackin]

On 12/20/2011 12:10 AM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
> O yea. If  Fidel hadn't been warned, those guys would have easily taken over Cuba. No sweat.
> This sounds wrong. Concerning he bay of Pigs Kennedy wasn't angry at the press , he was angry at the CIA for trying to pressure him into a war with Cuba. The press is hardly a secret society. More a gossip mongering club with adverts. The CIA was and they had a lot of hate for Kennedy.

Kennedy was even angrier at the CIA than at the press, because the 
former had misled him and yes the invasion was doomed for all sorts of 
reasons in addition to the leak.

I was merely trying to clarify what "the speech" was all about. I'm no 
defender or admirer of Kennedy.

Kennedy was a cold warrior along with the best of  them. He just wasn't 
a very good one in his early days in office. The object was to keep the 
cold war cold, not warm it up with the reckless adventurism that 
characterized the Bay of Pigs operation.  Later on he acted more 
prudently with regard to the Missile Crisis. He made a deal.

By the way, let me remind everyone of a progressive historian (Wisconsin 
School) by the name of William Appleman Williams.  He was a revisionist 
who at the same time held the respect of fellow historians who at that 
time were less attuned to his "spread of empire" thesis than they 
undoubtedly  would be today.  He was also not without his critics. I was 
a fan of his  books back in the 60s. Still have two of them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Appleman_Williams

P


> On Dec 19, 2011, at 3:59 PM, Paul Mackin wrote:
>
>> On 12/19/2011 1:30 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:
>>> one last point which is probably familiar to everyone here:
>>> Kennedy as a Catholic, could not be a Mason.  Longstanding enmity there.
>>>
>>> (Church obviously hugely in the wrong vis a vis the St Bartholomew's
>>> Day Massacre et al...
>>> Truman, 33rd degree Mason, dropping atom bomb not exactly a man of peace either)
>>>
>>> So when he said "we" don't like secret societies, secret handshakes,
>>> rituals where a giant papier mache owl is burned and cockamamie stuff
>>> like that, he obviously wasn't speaking for everyone, was he?
>> He was saying, in kind of an oblique way, that we don't like having information withheld from us, of being kept in the dark about things.
>>
>> He followed with a big HOWEVER-- sometimes secrecy is desirable.
>>
>> The Bay of Pigs invasion had just failed miserably. Part of the reason was that enough information was revealed in the press that Fidel had advance knowledge of the date of the landing.
>>
>> He was asking that the Press show more restraint with respect to information that the Cold War enemy could use.
>>
>> P
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